Stephen L. Salyer

Stephen L. Salyer, "president of Public Radio International, is trading a job he’s loved 17 years for one where the last two guys lasted nearly as long. Being president of the Salzburg Seminar in Austria will require a regular schedule of bending his long body into airliner seats to cross and recross the Atlantic, continuously ask foundations for money. As he has done all this time for PRI...

"Salyer meanwhile is making another commitment, getting married this past weekend to Susan Moeller, a University of Maryland journalism professor he will see when he’s not in his offices in Salzburg or Middlebury, Vt., or visiting with somebody who has money or ideas or both.

"The new job will have Salyer developing and fundraising in-person programs instead of radio shows, with an elite audience of achievers from around the world. Salyer himself was a fellow in 1974. Hearing such lecturers as Fred Friendly and Charles Guggenheim in Salzburg prompted him to redirect his career from population-growth issues to pubcasting, joining WNET in 1979 and PRI in 1988.

"He wants the Salzburg Seminar to lead more directly to action on difficult problems around the world, such as reconciliation between opponents in civil wars." (2005)


 * Director, Guidestar